DISCLAIMER:
Any posted Notice of Disciplinary Charges, Conviction Transmittal or other initiating document,
contains only allegations of professional misconduct. The attorney is presumed to be
innocent of any misconduct warranting discipline until the charges have been proven.

California Bar Journal Discipline Summaries

Summaries from the California Bar Journal are based on discipline orders but are not the official records. Not all discipline actions have associated CBJ summaries. Copies of official attorney discipline records are available upon request.

October 26, 2013

JON A. DIVENS [#145549], 58, of Beverly Hills was disbarred Oct. 26, 2013 and ordered to comply with rule 9.20 of the California Rules of Court and pay restitution.

Divens was found culpable of three counts of misconduct involving moral turpitude that stemmed from two separate securities matters. In 2009, Divens was hired to act as the escrow agent to hold a collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) while its sale was being carried out. Although he was not given the power to do so, Divens invested the CMO into a trading program, misappropriated the interest it generated for his own personal use and then surreptitiously transferred the CMO to prevent the owner from locating it. The sale did not ultimately go through.

In the other matter, Divens breached his fiduciary duties as an escrow agent when he failed to return a CMO to the company that owned it, as well as misappropriated approximately $157,444 of the interest payments earned on the CMO.

In mitigation, Divens had no prior discipline in 18 years of practicing law. He was ordered to pay $399,424.83 plus interest in restitution.